The Ex

by Alafair Burke

  “That’s a far cry from red versus blue ties.”

  “I know. But what I mean is that sometimes you decide things accidentally. Like Einer mentioned a few weeks ago that I was the rare forty-something-year-old who was cell only. But I never consciously made the decision. In the old days, I had a shitty apartment with a home phone because everyone automatically set up a phone account when you got an apartment. And then when I finally had some money in my pocket, I moved into a not-shitty place a few blocks away, and I just never hooked up a phone. Before I realized it, anyone who needed to find me called my office or cell. I ended up being one of those people who didn’t have a home phone number, just a mobile.”

  Jack was adjusting the blue tie. Double Windsor. It looked good. He was one of those men who looked better at forty-four than twenty-four.

  “So, you don’t have a landline, either,” I said.

  “Uh-uh.” His tie was straightened. He was now fiddling with his hair in the mirror above the fireplace.

  “But you’ve lived here since—what—2001?”

  “Yeah, right after Buckley was born.”

  “So that’s what I don’t understand. No one was cell phone only in 2001. But now you don’t have a landline. It’s one thing to never get around to hooking it up. But at some point, you actually took the time to call Verizon and tell them to disconnect your phone. Why? To save thirty bucks a month?”

  He had moved on to taming a stray eyebrow. “We never used it, I guess. I really don’t remember.”

  It was the same breezy tone he’d used when he lied to me about Ross Connor’s attempt to interrogate him: Oh, yeah, I guess I did have one break from routine. When I’d asked him about making a threatening comment about Neeley: Did I?

  “Now that I can tell when you’re lying to me, I can’t help but wonder how many times I missed the signs.”

  He turned away from the mirror and faced me. “Go ahead and ask the question, Olivia.”

  “It’s not a question, it’s a fact. Tracy Frankel’s phone records—Einer thought she dialed the wrong number to a Soho shoe shop three times in a row. But he was wrong. Tracy was trying to call you.”

  He punched the side of a fist against the edge of the mantelpiece. “This is just like you to dance around the issue for ten minutes, setting up some kind of test that’s impossible for me to pass. Can’t you just talk to me like a normal human being? It’s not what you think. I didn’t do this.”

  My legs were shaking as I rose from the sofa. I had never seen Jack like this. “I saw your face when the ADA read Tracy’s name at the arraignment. I thought you were freaked out because she was so young, but you recognized her name.”

  Jack opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  “By the way, you’re on your own for this inspection,” I said, dropping my cup in his office garbage can. “And once the police are gone, I’d spend the rest of your time coming up with an explanation for why Tracy would be calling your old number. I figured this out, and it’s pretty obvious that Scott Temple did, too. The bail hearing’s in two days. You’re going back to jail.”

  I EXITED THE ELEVATOR TO find Nick the doorman buttoning his blue blazer around his thick torso. “Good morning, Miss Randall. Normally I see you here when I’m on my way home.”

  “I’m the early bird today, I guess. Hey, Nick. Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I rifled through my briefcase until I landed on a manila file folder, and then plucked out an eight-by-ten printout. “Have you ever seen this woman before?” It was Tracy Frankel’s booking photograph from her one drug arrest.

  “Um—maybe? She looks familiar, I guess.”

  “Do you mean from the newspaper?” I prompted. The media coverage of the shooting had been so focused on Jack and Malcolm Neeley that Tracy Frankel’s and Clifton Hunter’s photographs were rarely shown. But they had been featured in a few articles. “Something about the shooting down at the waterfront?”

  Nick looked left and right, monitoring the lobby traffic before speaking in a hushed voice. “We’re under strict directions from the co-op board not to gossip about Mr. Harris’s . . . situation. Let the justice system do its thing, you know? Not for the neighbors to be all up in his business.”

  “Sure. That sounds sensible.”

  I was heading toward the revolving door when Nick called out behind me. “You know what? Come to think of it, now that you mention Mr. Harris, I do remember where I’ve seen her. She came here looking for him once, or maybe twice.”

  I turned around and pulled the picture again from my bag, laying it on the marble counter before Nick. “This woman? She came looking for Jack Harris?”

  “Yes. It was a while ago. You know, before the, uh—”

  “Situation?”

  “Yeah, exactly. But not long before, because I remember she wasn’t wearing a lot of clothes, you know? So it was hot out already. I described her to Mr. Harris, and he made it clear that I should ask her to leave if she came back. I thought maybe she was some bad-influence friend of Buckley or something, but it’s not my place to ask. Oh, wait, that’s right—yeah, it’s coming back to me. After he said tell her to leave if she comes back, I saw her one more time, talking to Buckley on the street, but she never showed up again, not that I saw. That was the end of it. Does that maybe help Mr. Harris with his . . . you know?” he whispered.

  I thanked Nick effusively for his help, but, no, it was definitely not helpful to Jack’s case.

  Jack had an affair with one of Buckley’s friends? No, Tracy was four years older, an entire generation in teen years; I couldn’t imagine a connection between them. There was another explanation.

  The second I hit the sidewalk outside Jack’s building, I called Don. He picked up immediately. “That former client who works at CUNY, the one who told you that Tracy Frankel only enrolled in one class before dropping out? Any chance you can call him? We need him to look up Tracy’s college application. Her mother said she bounced around from school to school.”

  “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “A list of every school she went to, hopefully with the dates.”

  “That’s a tall order.”

  “And don’t say anything about this to Jack or Charlotte yet.”

  “Okay. Am I allowed to ask what’s going on?”

  “Jack’s been lying to us this entire time.”

  BY THE TIME I GOT to the office, Don had the information I’d asked for. “I got hold of my guy at CUNY. I’ve never heard of any of these places, but I’m no expert on schools for rich, troubled city kids.” He handed me a sheet of paper. “What the hell’s going on?”

  According to her one and only college application, Tracy had attended three high schools: the French School, Halton Girls’ School, and the Stinson Academy. “It’s a connection to Jack. Or at least it might be.” I showed him the crime report from the Penn Station shootings, listing Molly’s next of kin as Jackson Harris, along with his phone number. “Remember how Einer said Tracy called a shoe store in Soho three times? It bugged me at the time because if it had been a wrong number, she eventually would have called someone just one digit off. But she didn’t. She was trying to call Jack. The shoe store number used to be Jack’s landline at home, before Penn Station.”

  Don looked confused. “And why would Tracy Frankel be calling him?”

  “My guess is for money. She was an addict, and her parents had cut her off.”

  “What am I missing here?”

  “I think Tracy was blackmailing Jack. I just need to make a phone call to confirm it.”

  I CALLED THE LAST HIGH school Tracy had attended.

  The headmaster at the Stinson Academy sounded nothing like a headmaster. No snoot or toot. In a heavy Bronx accent, John DeLongi confirmed that he’d been what he preferred to call the “head coach” at Stinson Academy for eleven years.

  “Oh good. That means you’ll probably be able to help me. My name is Olivia Randall, and I’m one of the lawyers representi
ng Jackson Harris.”

  “Oh my. Well, that’s certainly been in the news.”

  “Yes, that always makes our job interesting. We’re gathering background information in the event we decide to put on character evidence. Of course one aspect of Mr. Harris’s good character is the volunteer work he’s done discussing literature and writing with kids.”

  “I’m no lawyer, but is that really the kind of thing a court will look at in a murder trial?”

  I flipped the bird at my phone. Just give the information! “Well, as I said, we’re just collecting background for now. I assume that if the time came for it, someone there could tell the court about the work Mr. Harris did at the Stinson Academy?”

  “Yeah, sure, no problem. I mean, he hasn’t come around for—I don’t know—two or three years, I guess, but, yeah, he was very generous with his time. Our students need modes of teaching that go beyond the traditional. With creative outlets, they can see that not everyone has the same cookie-cutter, billion-dollar jobs as their parents, and that’s okay.”

  “So, just to confirm, Jack Harris volunteered with his writing workshops during the 2011 to 2012 academic year?”

  “Well, that’s quite specific. Just one second and I can check this fancy machine here. Yep, sure enough, that was his last visit.”

  I now knew for certain how Jack had met Tracy Frankel. I hung up the phone and took the seat next to Don in the conference room.

  “I’m still completely confused,” he said. “Jack knew Tracy? How does this fit into his case?”

  “Jack and Tracy weren’t the only people at that high school.” I found a copy of Malcolm Neeley’s transcript from the Penn Station civil suit on the table. I flipped to page forty-two. “Look. Right there.”

  Don followed my finger to the critical sentence: Let’s talk next about your son’s move from the Dutton School to the Stinson Academy.

  I REMEMBERED THAT AMANDA TURNER worked at a high-end PR firm in the Flatiron District. I took the liberty of showing up unannounced.

  The security guard at the front desk made a quick call, and minutes later, Amanda—perfect hair and makeup—stepped from the elevator.

  “Max has made it perfectly clear that I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she said.

  “Please,” I said, “I can call you to the stand if necessary—Max, too—but something has come up in our investigation. It’s important. Doesn’t Max want to know the truth about his father’s murder?”

  Amanda let out a sigh. “Do you know what it’s like for him to be the crazy shooter kid’s brother, the one with the stupid asshole father? But Malcolm being a bad person doesn’t justify what Jack Harris did—”

  “Please, just one question about Max’s brother, okay? You told me that Todd was pining over a girl before the shooting at the train station. Was that another student at the Stinson Academy?”

  “Seriously? This is what you’re worried about?”

  “I think it matters, yes.”

  Amanda waved at an attractive blonde who whisked through the lobby toward the elevator, then stepped toward me and lowered her voice. “Yes, it was some girl he knew from the Stinson Academy. We never actually met her. Todd would talk about how beautiful she was, and—this is mean—but no beauty was going to give Todd the time of day. Max and I called her his imaginary girlfriend.”

  “Did Todd at least say what she looked like?”

  “Um, a little, but again, we’d sort of goof on it. He said she had dark hair and pale skin and looked like something out of a fairy tale. She was a couple of years older, I think.”

  “Do you remember anything else about her?”

  “Not really. But I remember he called her Tee. That’s all I know.”

  I WAS DISAPPOINTED WHEN BUCKLEY answered the door at Jack’s apartment.

  “Is something wrong?”

  For a teenager, the girl’s people-reading skills weren’t too shabby. “Just need to run something by your dad. Sorry for not calling.”

  “He told me the DA’s trying to put him back in jail until trial?”

  “It’s typical bluster,” I said. “The legal equivalent of trash talk. The DA is just trying to panic us into a plea deal.”

  I was lying through my teeth but didn’t know what else to tell her. She walked me into the living room, and Jack emerged from the back of the apartment, his hair still damp from a shower.

  “Guess all pop-ins are unannounced when you’re on electronic monitoring.”

  I wasn’t about to apologize. “Can we talk for a second?”

  He gave Buckley a look that had become shorthand for “beat it.” She couldn’t be within earshot if we were going to preserve attorney-client privilege.

  The second we were alone, I said two words: Tracy Frankel.

  “I don’t know why she tried to call my old number.”

  Still lying. “This whole time, you’ve been saying it was so unseemly to point out that she was a drug addict. Basic human decency. You are so full of shit, Jack. You didn’t want us digging into Tracy’s background because you were afraid we’d come right back to you. I called the Stinson Academy. You taught one of your workshops while she was a student. Tracy’s mother told me she had a crush on a poetry teacher. The condoms that Ross Connor saw. It all makes sense now; she was one of your girlfriends.”

  I saw Jack’s gaze move toward the back of the apartment. Even with a life sentence on the line, he was worried about his daughter finding out he was a cheater.

  “I screwed up, okay?” He sat on the sofa and gripped his knees with his fingertips. “It was a few times, and it was colossally stupid.”

  Finally. “So what happened, Jack? Did Tracy get a little too clingy after Molly died, calling you at home, talking about becoming the next Mrs. Jackson Harris? So you dropped her cold and disconnected your phone, and thought you’d gotten rid of her. But fast-forward, and now Mommy and Daddy won’t pay her bills. You’re in the news, a beloved widower and plaintiff in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a hedge fund manager. Suddenly you’re back on her radar.” I was pacing, my words flowing quickly. I could see every part of the story I was telling. “She calls the old number three times in a row, then starts showing up at your building. And when you don’t give her what she wants, she moves on to another target. She wasn’t calling the Sentry Group for Max; she was calling Malcolm. She was going to tell him everything she knew about you. And now she and Malcolm are both dead.”

  “You really think that? You think I could do something like that?”

  Yes, after all these weeks, with all this evidence, I finally did.

  Jack could see the answer to his question in my eyes. “I disconnected our phone line because she kept calling me after Molly died, and I just couldn’t even look at her without feeling sick. Then she showed up at the building a couple of months ago. She was blackmailing me.”

  “I found a witness who saw Tracy talking to Buckley. Was she threatening to tell your daughter, too?”

  Jack shot another look toward the back hallway. “She doesn’t know anything. Tracy asked her for directions or something, and then told me she’d met my daughter. Yes, she threatened to tell her everything.”

  “This wasn’t just about your affair with a seventeen-year-old girl,” I said. “This had something to do with Penn Station. Your lawsuit. Why else would Tracy go to Malcolm Neeley?”

  When I first realized Tracy had been trying to call Jack, I had assumed that it had something to do with an affair. But once I connected them both to the Stinson Academy, I had seen the common link to Todd Neeley. He had also been a student there, in love with an older girl named Tee, with dark hair and pale skin.

  “She saw the lawsuit in the paper. She cornered me when I was coming out of my building and said, ‘I wonder what Mr. Neeley would think if he found out that you had a role in the shooting, too?’ I honestly never made the connection until then.”

  The connection. I felt the links in the chain beginning to form,
but I still hadn’t managed to hook them together. “Todd found out about you and Tracy.”

  Jack nodded. “He was obsessive. I guess he followed Tracy around enough that he saw her get in my car.”

  “And Penn Station?” I asked.

  “The witnesses said Molly was talking to Todd before he pulled out the gun. Everyone assumed she had seen something—some kind of gesture or a flash of the weapon, or maybe heard him say what he was about to do. She was the heroic teacher, the one who tried to talk him out of doing it.”

  “But Tracy told you otherwise,” I said, “when she showed up this summer.”

  “At first, I had no idea what she was talking about,” Jack said. “But then she tells me that she knew Todd from school. When he asked who her boyfriend was, she actually told him—that’s how she was. Bold. Reckless. And smart enough to figure out the truth. I should have told you, but I was afraid no one would believe me. I mean, falling for some girl who threw herself at me—”

  “Really, Jack?”

  “She did,” he said. “Repeatedly. But you’re right; she was seventeen years old. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I was—I wasn’t happy with Molly. I always had one eye open, looking for something else—someone else. You of all people should understand.”

  It was a low blow. “That’s not the same. I wasn’t a teacher sleeping with a teenager.”

  “No, you were just fucking my brother.”

  I felt myself flinch. All these weeks, he had acted like he had forgiven me. I had convinced myself he didn’t know it was Owen. “Jack—”

  “I helped him pick out that watch.” His voice sounded distant. “Nice enough to be presentable, cheap enough to take an occasional beating on the job.”

  I searched his face for some explanation for why he hadn’t said anything earlier, but his eyes were dead. I had no idea who I was looking at.